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Roma refugees should be welcomed, not rebuffed: Marmur

Jews and Roma both endured the Holocaust, which explains the Jewish community’s new refugee advocacy initiative.

Relatives of a Roma woman shot during an attack by vigilantes attend her funeral in Kisleta, Hungary. Many Roma have fled to Canada to escape persecution in Europe. (Aug. 7, 2009) (Bela Szandelszky / The Associated Press)

If there are bogus refugees in Canada, the Roma aren’t likely to be among them. The latest evidence comes from a report by the United Nations Children’s Fund. It states that the Roma are at great and growing risk in the European countries of their birth. Their rights are being systematically violated through deliberate neglect and persecution.

They aren’t being killed outright, but extreme poverty, social marginalization and countless other forms of discrimination condemn many to a slow death.

Writing in the online journal Open Democracy, Bernard Rorke, a respected researcher and advocate, states that the de facto segregation of the Roma “amounts to a wilful and malicious squandering of Roma communities’ most precious assets — the intellectual capacities of future generations.” The children, victims of xenophobia and deprived of care and education, are most at risk.

Apparently, few of the efforts by the European Union to ease conditions have yielded results or are likely to do so in the foreseeable future because of widespread anti-Roma prejudice. The re-emergence of fascism and Nazism in Europe, especially in Hungary where many Roma live, constitutes a threat of much worse things to come.

That’s why many Roma seek refuge in Canada, unfortunately often only to be rebuffed also here. Even though the government’s immigration restrictions may not explicitly target them, they’re usually among the prime victims. And many of those who manage to come here don’t get jobs, may be deprived of medical care and are under threat of deportation. Others are being vigorously discouraged from coming.

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Many immigrants whose children and grandchildren now shape the policies of this country were once viewed with no less suspicion than the Roma are now. The same reprehensible qualities that are being pinned on them had been pinned on previous new arrivals, e.g., the Irish, the Italians and, of course, the Jews fleeing Czarist pogroms and Nazi extermination camps.

That’s one reason why many members of the Jewish community are anxious to be of help. Non-Jewish activists like Mary Jo Leddy of Romero House in Toronto report that a disproportionate number of volunteers are Jews.

Earlier this month, Leddy chaired a panel at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto about the plight of the Roma. The panellists were Gina Csanyi-Robah, the director of the Roma Community Centre; Anna Porter, who has written about post-Communist Europe and the fate of Jews in her native Hungary during the Holocaust, and Bernie Farber, the former CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress.

The Nazis sent Jews and Roma (the “Gypsies”) to the same gas chambers. Like Jews, many Roma are Holocaust survivors. Jews who have found a home in Canada are now trying to reach out to the Roma as well as to all other refugees. That’s behind the new Jewish countrywide advocacy initiative that was launched last Friday in Toronto.

Stephen Lewis, former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations, will lead a team of committed volunteer activists under the banner of the Jewish Refugee Action Network. Its stated goal is “to restore Canada’s humanitarian tradition and democratic principles to refugees.” The organizers are appealing for wide “multi-faith and multicultural support.”

Jews have always been challenged to heed the oft-repeated command in the Hebrew Bible to care for the stranger “for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” But, of course, the Bible belongs to all of Western civilization. It speaks to women and men of all faiths and none.

Because Canada has become the country it is now thanks to the strangers who escaped persecution and death to find refuge here, the imperative to care for today’s refugees facing similar perils is addressed to each of us.

The danger of ostensibly tighter regulations and apparent increasing cavalier dismissals of refugee claims by officialdom threatens the very ethos on which Canada was built. Though this particular call for humane treatment of strangers comes from the Jewish community, the appropriate affirmative response is expected from all Canadians.

Dow Marmur is rabbi emeritus at Toronto’s Holy Blossom Temple. His column appears every other week.

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